What do you think of the German Supreme Court's decision to declare the 2008 data retention law unconstitutional?
The 2008 law required telecommunication companies to store all communication data (when, how long, between whom) for at least 6 months. The law met with fierce public resistence and finally this week, the court determined that the law violated the right to privacy in an extremely severe manner and thus unconstitutional. It also ruled that communication data stored so far must be deleted.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8545772.stm
What do you think of this decision? Would you have decided the same way? Give reasons why or why not you would have. Do you think the U.S. Supreme court would have decided likewise?
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4 Answers
I think it is a bit of a touchy subject, I believe IF the intention was completely true that this information was for to be only used for as it says or laws that would better protect the people from this information being use without fair reason. “The law – designed to combat terrorism and serious crime – required telecoms companies to keep logs of calls, faxes, SMS messages, e-mails and internet use.”
It seems from what I read the laws that were there are not rigid or ideal enough to keep peoples privacy in the end “though the law specified that companies were not supposed to record telephone calls or to read any of the e-mail or SMS communications.
But the records would include evidence of who got in touch with whom, for how long and how often without requiring any evidence of wrongdoing.”
Are they implying that anyone who wanted to just because can get a hold of certain information?
If anything maybe they should have considered making it more only able to obtain the information within valid and justifiable reasons.Basically when the law has been broken or the like you then have reason to go after the information but it seems like to me as it stands is too open to anyone.
In the end I think it was the right choice.
Yes, this is huge news right now. It’s strange to see how our FDP agrees with the Greens and die Linke.
Now all the companies want their money back for having to buy the extra servers and storage.
Personally I think it was the right decision.
Would the US Supreme Court rule the same way ? My guess would be no. At least not with their current members.
Would it be that far off base to hazard a guess that one of the likely reasons for the German court ruling this way is due to Germany’s historical experience of the intrusiveness of a totalitarian government into the lives of ordinary citizens.
Just wondering.
Someday, after a technological/spiritual/shamanic renaissance, humanity will be able to store information permanently and use it for the public good.
But in the current age… governments and criminal corporations/organizations cannot be trusted to handle sensitive information longer than immediately necessary.
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